[From the “Silver Age,” an Historical Play, by Thomas Heywood, 1613.]
Proserpine seeking Flowers.
Pros. O may these meadows ever barren be,
That yield of flowers no more variety!
Here neither is the White nor Sanguine Rose,
The Strawberry Flower, the Paunce, nor Violet;
Methinks I have too poor a meadow chose:
Going to beg, I am with a Beggar met,
That wants as much as I. I should do ill
To take from them that need.—
Ceres, after the Rape of her Daughter.
Cer. Where is my fair and lovely Proserpine?
Speak, Jove’s fair Daughter, whither art thou stray’d
I’ve sought the meadows, glebes, and new-reap’d fields
Yet cannot find my Child. Her scatter’d flowers,
And garland half-made-up, I have lit upon;
But her I cannot spy. Behold the trace
Of some strange wagon,[196] that hath scorcht the trees,
And singed the grass: these ruts the sun ne’er sear’d.
Where art thou, Love, where art thou, Proserpine?—
She questions Triton for her Daughter.
Cer.——thou that on thy shelly trumpet
Summons the sea-god, answer from the depth.
Trit. On Neptune’s sea-horse with my concave trump
Thro’ all the abyss I’ve shrill’d thy daughter’s loss.
The channels clothed in waters, the low cities
In which the water-gods and sea-nymphs dwell,
I have perused; sought thro’ whole woods and forests
Of leafless coral, planted in the deeps;
Toss’d up the beds of pearl; rouzed up huge whales,
And stern sea-monsters, from their rocky dens;
Those bottoms, bottomless; shallows and shelves,
And all those currents where th’ earth’s springs break in;
Those plains where Neptune feeds his porpoises,
Sea-morses, seals, and all his cattle else:
Thro’ all our ebbs and tides my trump hath blazed her,
Yet can no cavern shew me Proserpine.
She questions the Earth.
Cer. Fair sister Earth, for all these beauteous fields,
Spread o’er thy breast; for all these fertile crops,
With which my plenty hath enrich’d thy bosom;
For all those rich and pleasant wreaths of grain,
With which so oft thy temples I have crowned;
For all the yearly liveries, and fresh robes,
Upon thy summer beauty I bestow—
Shew me my Child!
Earth. Not in revenge, fair Ceres,
That your remorseless ploughs have rak’t my breast,
Nor that your iron-tooth’d harrows print my face
So full of wrinkles; that you dig my sides
For marle and soil, and make me bleed my springs
Thro’ all my open’d veins to weaken me—
Do I conceal your Daughter. I have spread
My arms from sea to sea, look’d o’er my mountains,
Examin’d all my pastures, groves, and plains,
Marshes and wolds, my woods and champain fields,
My dens and caves—and yet, from foot to head,
I have no place on which the Moon[197] doth tread.
Cer. Then, Earth, thou’st lost her; and, for Proserpine,
I’ll strike thee with a lasting barrenness.
No more shall plenty crown thy fertile brows;
I’ll break thy ploughs, thy oxen murrain-strike:
With idle agues I’ll consume thy swains;
Sow tares and cockles in thy lands of wheat,
Whose spikes the weed and cooch-grass shall outgrow,
And choke it in the blade. The rotten showers
Shall drown thy seed, which the hot sun shall parch,
Or mildews rot; and what remains, shall be
A prey to ravenous birds.—Oh Proserpine!—
You Gods that dwell above, and you below,
Both of the woods and gardens, rivers, brooks,
Fountains and wells, some one among you all
Shew me her self or grave: to you I call.